Accountant fined £25k over disclosure notice failures

In what HMRC describes as ‘an historic first’, an obstructive accountant who failed to cooperate with a tax fraud investigation has been fined £25,000 under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act for failing to comply with disclosure notices.

Anil Shah, an accountant from Middlesex, refused to assist HMRC officers who were investigating suspected tax evasion by his clients, despite being served with the legally binding documents.